Indecent Proposal (13 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mother said. “It’s what men in your position—”

“I’m better than that,” Harrison snapped. “I’m better than those men.”

“Those men,” Mother scoffed. “Like you know—”

“I’m better than Dad!” Harrison shouted, knowing how those words would wound her. How they would rip at her hard façade. She stared at him for one moment with terrible hurt, terrible pain. But he didn’t regret saying it. “I know about Heidi. The world may not know what you and Dad did. But I do.”

Wallace glanced away, as if he could make himself vanish.

“It wouldn’t be the same,” Mother said with prickly
care, casting a threadbare chill over a deep embarrassment. “You are not already married.”

“I won’t do what Dad did.”

“I’m the one who paid that girl off,” Mom said.

“Then I won’t do what you did either.” He felt bad for his mother, he did, but her feelings were just going to have to be sacrificed because he was exhausted running from his family’s past both in public and behind doors. “You’ve been telling me for months I should get married. That it would help me seem more substantial. More grounded. And now, here I am … getting married.”

“Not like this! You honestly think a wedding will fix the gossip?”

“I do. A wedding and a good show.” Harrison got out of his chair and stepped around his desk to lean against the front of it. “That’s where
you
come in.”

The rest of the world held her in esteem. They bought the show she put on with such seamless skill. The perfect hair and clothes, the charity work, the unwavering support of her husband in the face of whispers and innuendos.

Somehow, no matter how many times she was the silent, supportive wife at the edge of the stage, no one ever pitied her.

Maybe because everyone knew that Patty Montgomery single-handedly, over and over again, had pulled her husband from the brink of disaster.

And looking at her—about to enlist her for the exact same job for his benefit—Harrison felt only sadness. Pity.

He wondered if his mother remembered who she really was. Before devoting her life to keeping her husband in a position of power, despite all Ted’s efforts to fall from grace.

He wanted to tell her that it was okay. That he knew
all the truths she worked so hard to keep hidden. For a moment he wanted them to just be honest with each other.

But there was no telling what she would do if he tried to pull down all the walls of the world she had created.

As if she could read his mind, her face changed from frustration to something utterly familiar and hard and cold, and the moment for honesty vanished.

That slightly raised eyebrow, those pursed lips as if she’d smelled something bad, but was too polite to say it—that was the mother of his childhood. The mother with the expression that said
don’t come to me with your minor fears and heartbreaks. I would rather not be bothered by your desire for attention or affection
.

As a kid he’d been baffled by that look on her face, because she didn’t look that way when they were in public. She gave her kindness to strangers, saved her chill for him and for Ashley.

So effective was that face of hers, that vague air of disappointment and disinterest, that he just stopped wanting anything from her.

It wasn’t easy screwing with the balance of his relationship with his mother. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like needing her. His life was much more comfortable when he kept an icy, businesslike distance between them.

The chill was their comfort zone, and needing something from her made him feel vaguely threatened.

“If she agrees to my proposal, we’re getting married. At minimum for two years.”

“Two years!” she cried.

“To make it seem at least slightly legitimate. But we will have to convince the voters and the press that Ryan and I are in love. And that’s a show that only you can help us pull off.”

“You are kind of the Great and Powerful Oz,” Wallace said, squeezing the tennis ball instead of tossing it.

“Help us groom her for the role of a congressman’s wife.” Harrison hoped to appeal to her hubris. “Help us convince everyone that we’re happily married.”

Do for me what you have done for Dad your entire married life. Make the lie seem real
.

“You won’t win this election, Harrison,” she said, as if she couldn’t wait to get that off her chest.

“That’s not the point. This election, next election, it doesn’t matter. She needs to look the part and we need to act like she’s being welcomed into this family. It’s the only way any of this works. It’s the only way my entire career isn’t derailed.”

“And if she doesn’t agree?” Mother asked. Harrison shrugged.

“We let the press tear her to pieces and hope we can stay above it.”

“I’m leaning more toward that option myself,” Wallace said, which actually made Mom smile.

“So … who is she?” she asked, tucking her purse on her lap and crossing her arms over it. “What exactly are we dealing with?”

“Let me do the honors,” Wallace said, pulling from the top of the stack of files on Harrison’s desk the report their investigator had made. He cleared his throat and opened the file. “Ryan Michelle Kaminski is a high school dropout.”

Mom put her head in her hands.

“Oh wait,” Wallace said. “It gets better. Remember that Lip Girl product from about fifteen years ago?”

“No.”

“Wallace, let this go, would you?” Harrison asked. Ever since they’d dug up this little gem from Ryan’s past, Wallace had been telling anyone who would listen.

“Let it go?” Wallace laughed. “Your future wife was
a teenage fantasy for boys up and down the eastern sea-coast. This is something we need to deal with.”

“What is the Lip Girl product?” Mom asked.

“It was this Chapstick stuff that was sweet and sticky and kind of gross, but the whole campaign was around this one beautiful girl putting it on, kissing a man on the lips, and then turning and saying to the camera in a breathless purr, ‘Try it. He’ll like it.’ ”

“You’re kidding me,” Mother said.

“She was seventeen.”

“Oh my God,” she gasped.

“Look,” Harrison said, trying to stop the entire meltdown. “It’s bad. We all know it’s bad. That’s why we need everyone pulling together on this.”

Patty’s blue eyes slid to his and she made no effort to hide her repulsion. And he knew his mother would help, because she would rather eat her hands than have her family name suffer this kind of ignominy. But she would make Ryan pay.

“I pray she does not agree to this,” she said.

“You and me both,” chimed in Wallace.

At that moment Harrison’s cell phone rang and while everyone else froze in horror around him, he calmly grabbed it off his desk and glanced at the New York area code.

“It’s her,” he said, which sent Wallace into an explosion of swearing.

He glared Wallace into silence before engaging his phone.

“Hello?”

“Harrison?”

It was a surprise to realize he’d recognize that dry, slightly husky voice anywhere. He turned away from his riveted audience. “Yes?”

“This is Ryan. Look, I’m … ah … going to take you up on your proposal. But I have my own terms.”

He sagged with relief. Now, maybe there was a chance he was going to make it through to the other side of this with his reputation and name at least marginally intact.

“Wonderful. I’ll have a driver come and pick you up at your apartment and take you to LaGuardia, where there will be a jet waiting for you. You have a half hour to pack.”

“You … you can just make all that happen in a half hour?”

“That is only the beginning of what I can do, Ryan. I’ll see you in roughly three hours.”

“I have a lawyer and he’s on his way to Atlanta now,” she said, and he imagined her up-thrust chin and was reminded of the woman he met that night in the bar. The woman he’d liked quite a bit.

“Good.”

“And you’re paying for him.”

He almost mentioned conflict of interest but decided against it. He needed her here, married and undergoing some fairly extensive media training as soon as possible.

“Fine.”

“All right … I guess I’ll see you in three hours.”

Harrison hung up and turned to his campaign manager and mother, both of whom looked braced for a disaster. “We have a wedding to plan.”

Chapter 11

It was amazing how quickly a half hour passed when you spent most of the time freaking out, spinning in circles, and trying not to throw up.

She called her lawyer, then called Jenkins and arranged payment to keep her apartment for one more month; she’d figure out what to do with it when things calmed down. She thought about calling Wes, but decided he’d done enough. And then she tried to pack, but she could only stare at her leather and her halter tops and the cut-offs and thin jersey skirts.

She had six pairs of flip-flops. One of them—her favorite pair—was held together with duct tape. The idea of standing next to Harrison wearing anything she owned was ludicrous.

All of this was ludicrous.

Even her nicer stuff, such as the dress she bought on sale for a friend’s wedding last year. Or the cheap business suit she wore to auditions that required that kind of look—it reeked of wrong. Of not at all good enough.

“Screw it,” she muttered, and just threw a bunch of underwear and pajamas into her bag with her toiletries and makeup. She’d get new clothes; half this stuff wouldn’t fit in a few months anyway. She’d buy a whole set of costumes for this ridiculous role she was going to play and then when it was over, she’d burn it. She’d burn it and take her baby and start a new life.

The sound of her cell phone ringing and rattling against the counter broke the silence in the apartment.

With a shaking hand she answered, “Yes?”

“Ryan Kaminski?”

“This is her.”

“I’m the driver who is taking you to LaGuardia. You have a pack of journalists in front of your apartment. I’m idling in the back near the Dumpsters.”

“I’ll be there in a second,” she said and hung up.

She hooked her bag over her shoulder and looked around her apartment one last time.

Once, years ago, she’d thought that it was only a matter of time before her life changed. Before something amazing happened to her. Despite a life that conditioned her otherwise, growing up where she did, how she did, the best she could hope for was an amicable divorce and a kid who stayed out of jail.

Even after what she and Paul did to her family, and then the divorce, she still believed that something fantastic was waiting just around the corner.

That was what modeling had led her to believe. That she was one lucky break, one callback, one random Jumbotron shot at a football game away from her life changing.

Years had passed and she wasn’t sure when she stopped believing that. When she just accepted every day at face value. Something to survive and celebrate in equal parts. She’d lost sight of that strange hope and settled down hard into a life that was constantly in danger of collapsing under its own weight.

Money. Work. Now this baby. Her health. Her family. All of those things could crush her life as it stood. And she lived that way—every day. She was just like millions of other people, barely getting by, not making a dent or a scratch on the world they lived in.

Even in New York City, miles away from Bridesburg, she was living nearly the exact same life as if she’d stayed there.

But here she was standing at the edge of life-altering change. Terrifying change. And she was torn between laughing and crying. It was going to be awful; she knew that. Day in and day out with Harrison’s judgment and superiority, hand in hand with memories of that stupid night.

And a baby!
His baby!
That he was so willing to walk away from when all of this was over.

What kind of man was capable of that?

The kind of man who would use her and put her away when her use was over. So, she would do the same. She’d get her terms agreed to, change her family’s life, spend her two years smiling and waving and doing God knows what else, and then she’d … put him aside.

At the last minute, she grabbed one of her red teacups and shoved it in her bag.

A reminder for the awful times ahead of who she was and that she was precious. If to no one else, at least to herself.

Ryan spent the surreal trip from town car to private jet to town car arming and armoring herself with information. She was not going to show up at the Governor’s Mansion like some impoverished historical romance heroine who’d been knocked up by the Duke.

Wes had sent Ryan an email full of fascinating tidbits about the Montgomerys, and she studied it like she was cramming for her high school history test.

The Montgomerys were a fifth-generation political family out of Georgia.

They were soldiers and government leaders dating all the way back to the Civil War.

But in recent years, Harrison’s father, Ted, had been a very naughty boy. Politically and perhaps personally. Errant whiffs of scandal had dogged him for most of
his career, including a nearly fatal car accident with a young woman who was not his wife. After the accident, Patty Montgomery quashed any rumors that Ted and the girl who’d nearly died were anything but co-workers.

But all of that had the faint stench of “she protests too much” around it.

The family ran an extensive foundation that seemed to fund Ashley Montgomery’s aid trips.

Harrison … well, Harrison was remarkably boring, really. Smug and indifferent in teenage interviews. There was, however, a hilarious picture of him with Chelsea Clinton looking hugely uncomfortable at a prom. His first year at Georgia he’d been a miserable student and a very serious frat boy. After freshman year he transferred to Emory, where he turned things around. Really turned things around. Double major in political science and history, and then he went to Emory Law and then kept going back to get more degrees. Including a Doctor of Law/Master of Theological Studies.

He started a nonprofit organization that served the families of vets, called VetAid.